When people think about manifestation or the law of attraction, they often think about visualising or having a positive mental attitude.
Manifestation experts do not usually recommend that we focus on negative memories or events because they teach that like attracts like and say that to focus on the negative will bring in more of the same.
But one of the best ways to create space for wonderful and unexpected things to manifest in your life is through the practice of forgiveness.
It is one of the best ways, but it can also be the most challenging because it can involve exploring what is perceived as being negative.
However I have noticed time and time again that whenever I truly release or let go of a painful event or memory, something unexpected and positive happens in my life.
The Forgiveness Challenge
It is challenging for us to forgive people for hurting us, ripping us off, letting us down or betraying us because we feel that by forgiving them, we would be condoning them or letting them off the hook.
Sometimes we feel that forgiveness means that we have to let them back into our lives again.
However forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning terrible acts or letting people off the hook. Nor does it mean that we have to let people who behave in a toxic manner back into our lives all over again.
Forgiveness is about releasing the pain caused by a negative memory or event. It’s about freedom and letting go.
Teachers and Anti-Teachers
Everyone that we encounter in our lives is a teacher – they can give us a positive and uplifting lesson or a nasty and harsh one. Or they can give us subtle lessons that we don’t even notice.
A person that ignites strong positive feelings in you, whose presence energises and uplifts you is reflecting back to you your own positive qualities.
A person that triggers negative emotions and reactions in you is reflecting a shadowy aspect of yourself that you are hiding from.
For example, when I bury my own anger, I usually find myself encountering a lot of ranting angry people.
Prosperity expert, Edwene Gaines, teaches that when somebody hurts you, you need look to see where you have been covertly hurting yourself in the same way.
There are some wounds and abuses that we have experienced in life that we often feel are impossible for us to forgive.
Sometimes we would dearly love to forgive someone but just can’t.
Other times, we think that we have forgiven them and feel peaceful for a week or two and then out of the blue, the memory of the episode will make us feel angry, hurt or distressed again.
Ho’oponopono
One method I have found to help with such situations is the old Hawaiian practice called Ho’oponopono.
One of the methods of Ho’oponopono that I find to be most effective is one which takes the villain of the piece out of the equation altogether. You don’t focus on the perpetrator(s). You focus on releasing the pain that you experienced during the event and not on the person that inflicted it upon you.
As you say the Ho’oponopono prayer, you can also visualise yourself as a child – your inner child, the oldest part of you who lives in the consciousness of your body and who is carrying all your pain for you :
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
I thank you
In this form of the Ho’oponopono practice, you are not talking to the person that you are trying to forgive or the person that you would like to receive forgiveness from. You are talking to the child within you that who is suffering because you are holding on to painful memories and negative programming.
By holding onto these painful memories, we are allowing the part of the mind that is stored in the body, the Ancient Child, to feel unloved, rejected, bitter and angry. We are keeping this part of the Self in prison.
So you tell this part of yourself:
I’m sorry for hanging on to this pain for so long
Please forgive me
Thank you for carrying it for me
I love you.
Then you allow the Child or the body consciousness that has been storing this negative energy and memory to let the pain go.
When practising this form of release on a regular basis, positive things that you may or may not have planned for or dreamed about tend to occur.
Sam Punch is the author of Manifestation Psychology and Vocation, Vocation, Vocation!
